Friday, July 25, 2025, 63.1* 0625
Even though I had just gotten to sleep, at Zsolt’s persistence I opened my eyes, looked at my watch trying to determine without glasses if the digital dots read 5:36 or 6:36. It wasn’t the first time I’d tried to read my watch, not because of barking. Magnesium is supposed to keep leg cramps from happening.
Soleil streams through an opening in leaves. I need to clean my glasses. Tissues coated in lanolin, good for the nose, not glasses. Maybe sunglasses are the resolution until Soleil goes up the hill to shine in drivers' eyes.
It’s a celebration—pour the coffee. After driving more than twelve hours with three dogs— looking back I shouldn’t have fretted over getting them into the car there had been enough confusion the preceding weeks to make them want to stay close. I wonder if they thought we were going for a walk when I took halters from hooks in the almost bare room. Crowding me, tails wagging, each wanting to be the first to put their head through a loop, to hear the click of security knowing we were on our way somewhere. No pleading, no sitting in the backseat begging them to get in, no picking up heavy paws putting them on a seat, shoving. No pulling the other way when I opened the car door, the three eagerly jumped in.
I went back into the house to make sure we had everything we needed. In the dining room a box – my cameras. Things that didn’t make it in the final rush the handyman would remove. The bed, the rugs, the curtains all were staying for the new owner. Somewhere, not in my ears were my hearing aids; somewhere my just-filled blood pressure prescription.
In the garage by the door things the movers did not put on the truck, things they were supposed to. They had managed to load the ancient, cast-iron safe that was in the garage when we bought the place. The safe without a known combination, the safe that was locked. It would’ve made a great anchor. The storage closet had not been opened or packed as block-letter signs instructed. The moving company owner on the phone suggested I rent a U-Haul trailer for the stuff left behind. He wanted to know why I hadn't supervised the movers. It never occurred to me while I was packing the computer room that some could not read.
We stopped for gas three times. I had to hold onto the car until my hips unlocked their rhythm moving toward the pump. At least I didn’t have to read road signs. I just had to follow Chris’s red truck--keep up with him, watch the load bounce, avoid the shovel that fell out. I kept reminding myself to breathe. The dogs had never seen eight lanes of traffic. I wished like them I could just lie down until this trip from Pennsylvania to Maine ended.
Then it got dark. Of course it did. The sun isn’t going to shine just because I don’t like driving in the dark, or because I have trouble seeing with lights shining in my eyes. Sometime after midnight on July 25, 2024, we arrived at Chris’s house, a couple of miles from mine. The family was gathered on the porch wanting to see the dogs (not me, well maybe me). The dogs were not getting out. It may have had something to do with the Pit Bull and German Shepherd who lived there. I called Chris, explained – everyone including the Pit Bull and German Shepherd disappeared. I wasn't making the best new beginning.
Chris began unloading his truck, reassembling metal crates in the garage. The plan, their plan was for me to sleep in the house in a room without windows. Oh, my goodness how ungrateful was I. What was my claustrophobic-self thinking? The dog mom self was thinking: The dogs, and I have never been separated, they will be very unsettled, their crates in a strange place, strange smells, no mom in sight. Sometime after 2 in the morning, I laid down on an inflatable mattress on the garage floor not sure how I’d manage getting out of it four hours later to meet the movers who couldn't get their truck down my driveway.
The past is released through laughter.
Photo: LJ Austin
